Senses

I kept wondering the other day about my senses. Don't get me wrong, I haven't lost them. But, I kept wondering about them in the literal sense. How mine, and all our senses were created, and have developed and evolved over the ages to adapt to our surroundings. How life, experiencing the various forms of energy, chemicals and reactions around it, created "openings" in its body which were capable of receiving inputs of the chief and most "informative" forms of energy.

If you ever cared to notice, we don't have a sense organ to tell us that a tide is approaching, or that a particular place has high x-ray concentration. These simple examples seem to show two of the prime factors which have influenced the formation of sense organs - one, that senses have developed in response to the most "informative" energy forms and chemicals around us, and two, that they have developed in a very optimal manner, that is to say that there are just enough number of organs to help us understand 90% of our surroundings, thus avoiding an explosion of sensory inputs to an overtaxed brain. In order to get information from the remaining 10% of sources around us, we may have needed a hundred, or perhaps more, organs. But the need for these has been replaced by a more powerful structure - the rationally thinking brain. This brain more than makes up for the tidal, earthquake and x-ray sensors that would otherwise be sticking out of our beautiful bodies! How? By means of enabling animals, men in particular, develop artificial sensors for other forms of energy.

This line of thought leads us to believe that somewhere in the universe where there is life, if there is an abundance of say, gamma rays, than sound, the organisms there would be equipped with gamma ears. Do I believe in this theory? Yes. Have I seen any of those ears? No, obviously not :)